When Wounds Become Sacred

The truth is, both the light and the shadows illuminate.

Something for Sundays reflects my personal journey in an evolving faith. Often, my writing wrestles with Mormon theology and tradition and may challenge some beliefs. If you're not in the right space to read this, I understand, I do not fault you, and I am so grateful you subscribe anyway. :)

A few months ago, I started going to therapy. Every week, I go into a physical office, sit on a couch in a softly lit room, and unload. One thing that struck me right away was not my therapist’s office itself, but the waiting room. The waiting room inside a therapist office is awkward because you are sitting with strangers who are all waiting to go to… uh, therapy. We know we are all there for a reason, and yet we carefully keep our eyes from making contact with each other. We know that out here in this waiting room we might look normal — like a person you’d casually pass on the street — but we know that within minutes we’ll be on a separate couch in a concealed room with our therapist, reaching for the tissues. It’s such a tender space. In one way or another, us people in that waiting room have reached a point in our  lives where we admitted we needed outside help. Where we admitted we can’t do it on our own. And that is so painfully awkward, but it is also feels holy. In the waiting room, there are many people next to me — so different from me, and yet. I see a gruff looking man with a baseball cap and work boots, and next to him I see a mother with her child, and that child is clutching a stuffed dog. And it is here, in this waiting room, that I can admit that I’d like to be holding a stuffed dog, too. 

There’s something beautiful about sitting in our woundedness like this. And so we wait — not to be magically healed by our therapist with the flick of a wand, but to be simply witnessed and held in our pain. 

Ironically, there have been times in my life when I have been oblivious to my own pain. I tried to deny it or push it away because I felt unjustified to suffer. I wanted to embrace positivity and only give my energy to that. In a religious setting, some people might confuse positivity for righteousness. We praise people in our religious circles who “never complain” as if positivity was a virtue. I do believe it is possible to find true joy in dark times. But the joy doesn’t cover the darkness. The joy exists alongside it. 

The truth is, both the light and the shadows illuminate. 

Years ago, I heard that another way to define sin was as woundedness. I have thought about that every day since. Reframing sin as woundedness allows us to shift from seeing it as criminal to viewing it with compassion — healing instead of judgment. It is easy to see that our woundedness may cause us to lash out and disconnect us from others, from ourselves, and ultimately, from God. We are born into a wounded world — with families and whole societies sitting on top of a deep, deep sadness. Sometimes this sadness disguises itself as hot anger that burns away the surface reactions to reveal the source of the pain.  Sometimes, this sadness goes unnoticed and unfelt as we try to ignore it, slapping a 'just be positive!' bandage over the discomfort. To determine proper treatment, one must first inspect the wound.

One of my favorite descriptions of Jesus is in Isaiah. He is described as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Yes, JESUS! Perhaps he was a man of sorrows because of, not in spite of, his capacity for pure, deep, encompassing love. Conversely, perhaps he was a man of pure, deep, encompassing love because of his familiarity with sorrow, pain, and grief. When we allow ourselves to love and be loved, does that not open us up for more pain? 

The story of Jesus — the very act of salvation — holds impossible grief and impossible love all together as one. The Christian symbol of salvation is not just miraculous resurrection but includes a Wounded Christ on the cross. Those two together — the woundedness and the new life — are the power and fullness of the love of God. 

After Jesus was crucified, people took his broken body, reverently tended to his wounds, wrapped him up, and laid him to rest in a tomb. For his followers at that time, they thought this was the brutal end of their Jesus. In Jewish tradition, it was said that the soul hovers over a dead body for three days after death, hoping to re-enter it. I’m sure by the third day his followers’ hope had waned, and they had accepted the finality of their Friend’s death. Could that not be a metaphor for the handling our own wounds, too? We must tend to them carefully, bandage them up, perhaps put them in a tomb for some time and allow them to die. And just like Jesus’ resurrection — just as we might be on the edge of our soul-stretching, dark waiting — suddenly, miraculously, there is Life born from those very Wounds.

I’ve noticed that some of the brightest, warmest, most generous people in my life are also the ones who have experienced that soul-stretching darkness. They have had the wisdom to let their wounds transform them. OOF. It has not come easy for them. It took a lot of time and effort to tend to those precious wounds, to mix the herbs and spices just right for their burial, to lay them down to rest. But now, it’s so clear to me that those wounds are actually sacred. 

People who have been through hell and back often are less judgmental — they don’t have space for judgment in themselves because of what they have gone through. It’s why I am so inspired by stories of the students at the Other Side Academy. The program freely hosts people with prison sentences and drug addictions who often stay at the Academy past their graduation to be mentors to newcomers. Their immense empathy for new students and understanding of the pain it takes to change is something they have earned.

As my heart softens, and my capacity for pure love increases, I am astonished at how often I see God. I wonder if Jesus’s teaching“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” is not a blessing in the distant future, but for here, now, around us. 

I see God in the dying leaves. I see God in an artist who captures a flower in a way I’ve never seen before — how can they see a flower so differently than me? I see God in a comforting hug. I see God in healing words like “I hear you” and “I accept you for who you are.” I see God in the eyes of hopeful children. I see God in the families feeding ducks at the pond. I see God in gardens and in wildfires. I see God in a sunrise. I see God in myself — in my shaky voice as I call my congressman after a devastating school shooting. Is that not a little bit of God in me? This stubborn hope that I have?

My wounds, my million little deaths of self and ego and beliefs and ignorance, eventually grow new skin. As a human, we have a choice to consciously participate in the necessary suffering of life. We can deny, avoid, rationalize, explain away, justify this call to suffering, or, in Richard Rohr’s words, we can take a deep breath and say what “God seems ready and willing to wait for, and empower… a free yes.” 

YES to the festering, painful, ugly, embarrassing wounds. YES to the gentle tending to our pain. YES to the waiting. YES to the shadows. YES to the light. And YES YES YES to the rebirth.

Thanks for being here,